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Future AMD GPUs To Be More Open-Source Friendly?

12-29-2007, 09:20 PM

Phoronix: Future AMD GPUs To Be More Open-Source Friendly

AMD is on the heels of releasing the next set of GPU programming documentation to aide in the development of the open-source R500/600 drivers (xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd). It's already been discussed what this NDA-free documentation release will have, but one of the questions that have repeatedly come up is if/when AMD will release information on accelerated video playback. AMD's John Bridgman has now stated what they plan to release in the video realm as well as a new requirement for their future graphics processors: being open-source friendly while avoiding DRM.

Comment

If there are problems open sourcing UVD on RV670 chips, is there any chance on having it supported in the proprietary drivers? (or maybe, as a proprietary module, for the open source drivers? -I wouldn't mind, personally, if there is no other solution).

And what about encoding and transcoding? (in the proprietary drivers, or in the open source ones).

Comment

I bought my AMD Radeon X1900 XT 512 (R580) the day it was avaible and it's still a great card. I will skip the R600 series and the first R700 parts, but am looking forward to the R780 (R700 refresh) in the end of 2008. But R600 users will not like this new.

Comment

I think that it's great that amd will be releasing the IDCT and motion comp to developers in addition to 3d.

I think it's also quite fair for them to not release anything that might interfere with their legal obligations, especially in the light of their willingness to improve their design. This as a whole helps to level the playing field against intel who has fully open source drivers for their graphics cards, but scrubs out certain portions like macrovision.

I think it's important to point out that this makes fusion processors much more viable for linux use, especially if amd is to compete against intel's menlow and moorestown platforms in the umpc/mid space.